Junot Diaz is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, as well as the short story collections Drown and, most recently, This Is How You Lose Her —- a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award. He's a professor at MIT, a MacArthur "Genius," and the first Latino to sit on the Pulitzer Prize board of jurors. Still, the Dominican-American writer graciously took the time to answer a few of my questions via e-mail amidst a rigorous teaching schedule and a national paperback book tour (he'll be stopping by Yale University on Nov. 12 and Naugatuck Valley Community College on Nov. 14). We managed to cover the meaning of art, some of the quirks of his reoccurring narrator Yunior, and I even did my best to coax a little writing advice out of him.